Tralfaz

Category: Music

  • Music Reflections

    When I first started making money, my goals were to be able to buy LP’s of music I liked. I put together stereo from old components, an old heathkit amp and tuner, some hand built (not great) speakers, and I splurged on a decent Technics turntable.

    What music did I buy?  Well, bands like Kiss and Cheap Trick were all the rage, but I had more eclectic tastes, and veered more towards what I called “art rock” (now widely called “Progressive Rock” or Prog Rock). Bands like ELP, Yes, King Crimson, were all in my early discs. I remember a DJ on KSJO who played all this awesome music that got me into a lot of great tunes. Greg Stone was his name, and from him I got into Camel, Gary Moore, Alan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck (and the yardbirds), The Moody Blues, and more.

    I started playing guitar, and then my tastes ran toward harder rock. Led Zeppelin, UFO, Michael Schenker Group, Scorpions, Y&T, Ratt, Steeler, Yngwie Malmsteen all were on my daily playlist. And who could forget Rush, especially the early work (through moving pictures)? Also lots of what is called “classic rock”, pink floyd, AC/DC, Kansas, etc is in my collection now.

    As time went on, I kept adding from these genre’s, not really straying far. As some friends veered into country, or modern rock from the 80’s, I stayed true to my roots. I got more into the Blues, listening to Robert Johnson, Johnny Winter, and a wide swath of Eric Clapton.

    Today, I still listen to most of the same genre. There are some new additions, Porcupine Tree, Special Machines, Marillion, collective soul, Blues Saraceno, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse, Frank Marino and Mahogany rush. So much awesome music, so little time.

    I was thinking about this as my 30th high school reunion is next weekend. I realized that I still listen to much of the same music as I did then, and really haven’t shifted into different and unfamiliar genres. I guess that the habits learned then will stick with me forever.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same…

  • Is the music collection headed for the dustbin of history?

    When I first started making money (delivering the San Jose Mercury News), I put together a hifi system (old components, amplifier, and turntable) and started buying music.  I was addicted to the extension of my collection, which ran to hundreds of LPs, including some rarities, and bootlegs. I remember the thrill when I first got a car and was able to drive to Santa Cruz, not to visit the beach, but to visit the huge used record stores on Pacific Grove.

    Then the Compact Disc revolution started (1983, I bought a very expensive for me, Technics CD player).

    Fast forward 27 or so years. I no longer have the LP’s (they were sold during a move, sadly), but I still have hundreds of CD’s. Of course, I have jumped on the digital bandwagon, and have bought a few thousand tunes from the ITMS and Google Play store.  My collection runs to some 18K tracks, spanning many genres, as well as some rarities.

    But that is at risk of becoming obsolete. I have found that a 150G music collection is formidable to keep sync’d across all my devices and computers. It is just too big.

    Fortunately, the Google Play and iTunes Match means I can stream it to my devices as will. But even with that convenience, I find that I am using itunes or google play less and less.

    This is because of my subscription to Spotify. Their streaming is so good that I don’t miss my tracks. And the selection of music is wide.  I have discovered some great bands that I would never have taken a risk on buying a track (Panzerballet is one).

    Of course, there are some downsides.  Some artists are absent (AC/DC, Paul Gilbert, and Led Zeppelin come to mind), so I will need my catalogs of these songs. As the licensing deals are reached, I expect those gaps to lessen, and while they won’t disappear, it will become much less annoying.

    I welcome the change. Managing and preserving a 18K track, 150GB music collection takes a lot of work. But for everyday listening, Spotify rocks. I do worry about the economics. While getting the major labels less pivotal to the music distribution game, I fear that the remuneration for artists will remain low (An excellent piece in the NY Times in January highlighted this), and thus make them less likely to open their catalogs.

    I still buy tracks from the various stores, and occasionally a CD when the tracks aren’t available (Paul Gilbert’s band “Racer X” comes to mind), but Spotify has disrupted the music market for the better.

  • Oh crap. I think I am in trouble… (GarageBand edition)

    I was cleaning up some programs that I am not likely to use on my new MacBook Air (iPhoto, iMovie), and I figured I would also blow away Garage Band. 

    Garage Band is actually a lot cooler than I thought. Damn
    Garage Band is actually a lot cooler than I thought. Damn

    Before I deleted it, I thought I would open it up and see what it was all about. Then I found the Lessons part.

    Damn, that is cool.  Really cool. Now I need to buy widget to get my guitar plugged into my Mac.

    I bought the Artist Lesson of Alex Lifeson teaching how to play Working Man. 

    Damn, I am going to waste a lot of time with this.

  • A gem: The Phoenix Musical Instrument Museum

    Yesterday, on a lark, we visited the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). I wasn’t sure what I expected. Perhaps exhibits of seminal instruments, and artist histories (they do have that), but I was blown away.

    First, it is in a gorgeous building, with fabulous architecture, and a well thought out plan. We started on the second floor, in the Africa region, and was completely fascinated. There are included headsets that come alive when you get near a station. All around the museum there are rolling video displays of the history and origins of various instruments, and how they were used in folk or court music.

    And there are LOTS of musical instruments on display. Many are old, some are newer recreations, but the attention to detail, and the care with which the exhibits are curated is top notch. As I mentioned, we started in the Africa region (the cradle of civilization), moving through the middle east and then to Asia, the pacific islands (and Australia/NZ), and into Latin America. We spent three hours, and were blown away, and we didn’t even get to the US and European halls (for a different day, me thinks).

    Then on the first floor there are two halls worthy of spending time.  The Artists area, that has some selected icons. First up is Dick Dale, the king of surf guitar. Yep, you know I was groovin’ to that (I learned something, he was a southpaw, but played a right handed guitar upside down. Way cool). Also of note is Andy Summers of the Police, Roy Orbison, a LARGE display of Elvis Presley, and a display of Steve Vai’s triple neck guitar he used on the G3 tour in 2004.

    The other room is a “hands on” room where you can play with some instruments. The price of admission is worth it to play with a Theramin.  Fun and awesome. They also had a few guitars (horrible intonation, and action, but for people to mess with I guess that is OK), and lots of percussion stuff to play with.

    I will certainly return many times, to understand the wholeness. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was awesome and inspiring. Music is something that binds humans, and listening to the primitive bowed or plucked string instruments of the various countries in Africa, as well as some virtuoso quality lute music was just humbling.

    Highly recommended if you get to Phoenix with an afternoon to burn.

    (Oh, and there is a piano in the main lobby that people can just play. Clearly some people kept up their lessons.)

  • Music Streaming – conclusion

    TL;DR version: Spotify wins

    To round out the saga, I needed to make a decision on whether to keep Google  All-Access or Spotify for my online streaming pleasure. If you recall, I signed up for a trial of the Google all access, and was comparing it to Spotify.  While I am an Apple fan, I am not sure their entry this fall into an ad sponsored offering is going to be worth my time. (Perhaps if it was free with my iTunes match subscription …) Primarily, it is because I need to use it on my windows machines as well as my Mac, my iPhone and my Android tablet. iTunes sucks donkey balls on the PC, so unless Apple does something amazing, I am discounting it without trying it.

    Early on, Google All Access was plagued by the glitches that I experienced with my tunes in their database. Skips, pauses, and long halts in playing. Spotify pulled into the lead, because their dedicated application was really solid, and whatever magic they do buffering, it has almost no issues (except when my crappy work network connection flakes out).  But about 2 weeks ago, Google got their streaming act together, and it became solid. Almost as reliable as Spotify.

    However, I am going to stick to my Spotify premium account, and turn off the all access.  While it is $2 cheaper, and it is better integrated with my Android tablet, the Spotify apps make the difference. A quality user experience across platforms, coupled with great streaming, and a good catalog. Spotify FTW.

    Aside: One thing that I never did much of was use the radio option of spotify. I compared the radio option of Google All Access versus spotify, and I like the selections of the Spotify radio stations a wee bit better than on All Access.  Both services have holes in their catalog (due to licensing issues, I would believe), but points in All Access’s favor is that since I have all the Led Zeppelin and Paul Gilbert tracks (legally) they get in to the mix. But that isn’t enough to save its bacon.

    Winner: Spotify

  • Google All Access versus Spotify Premium

    Recap:  After Google announced their “All Access” plan for their Play service, I jumped on the free week.  The intent was to compare it to Spotify which I had been a premium customer for about a year and a half (I went premium there to get rid of the ads and the “sponsored tunes” which really sucked – being top 40 crap).

    Early on, the reason why I went to spotify was that even with all 18,000+ tracks of my music collection being in my library, it was shitty for streaming. Lots of skips, halts, and “burps”. Spotify, whatever they do, was far more robust in streaming, and unless I was having major network issues, it never got glitchy.

    At the start of my evaluation of the Play All Access service, the issues with shitty streaming were still there. In fact, they were worse than I recall. In the last week though, I have given the All Access another chance (my free month is expiring soon, so I have to decide if I want to pay $7.95 a month for it). I am impressed. Three days this week, not one glitch or streaming issue. You still have to use the damn browser (no dedicated application), but at least it has been solid.

    2 weeks ago, I would have put my money on Spotify, but now for reliability, the Google All Access plan seems pretty good.

    Still to compare is the quality of music matching in the radio.  So far, I think Spotify is ahead there, barely (for the record, Pandora smokes them both, but I have doubts about their long term viability). But Google has my entire music collection, and I listen to much that isn’t licensed to Spotify (Paul Gilbert and Led Zeppelin come to mind)

    Either way I go, I am now confident that my tunes on my work laptop will be fine being streamed.

  • Spotify vs Google “All Access”

    Last week, I posted about pitting spotify (premium) against the newly announced “Google All Access”, and today I am going to post an update.

    To be fair, I have only been using it for 4 or so days now, but the one thing that drove me nuts about using my collection in Play was that it would skip, stutter and freeze periodically.  And by periodically, I mean at least once an hour. I figured that Google would have addressed that by now, with their play to go large and challenge Spotify.

    But the skips, pauses, stutters, and even long freezes (up to a minute at a time) are still plaguing the service.  I have submitted feedback, but naturally no response (I expect none, as Google is notorious for their lack of direct support).

    I am not sure how much this is caused by it running in a tab on my Chrome browser, versus Spotify’s dedicated application. This is all on my PC (HP Elitebook 8640p, core i5, with 16 G ram, and my work network). But Spotify either does a better job of routing packets to me, or queuing up a buffer to avoid the follies of internet packet delivery.

    It is a shame, as I was grooving on the All Access radio stations. Their matching algorithms aren’t as good as Pandora, but they aren’t bad. And having my 18K files in their storage means that even the artists that don’t do streaming will be mixed in with my radio selections. (I could do that with Spotify, but I would need to dedicate 120G of disk locally for it, a big negative).

    So, I am back to Spotify, and enjoying their service, and performance.  I will continue to try the Google service, on my Nexus 7. Maybe with an Android native app it will be better?

  • Google’s “All Access” vs. Spotify Round 1

    I have written in the past about the music “locker” services. I have been a user of Amazon, Google’s Play, and Apple’s iTunes Match.

    But I have actually gone to using Spotify pretty much across the board. They have a great library, very deep, and lots of great genre’s to experiment with and explore. Since my work laptop has limited free space, I have pretty much resigned myself to streaming.

    I joined spotify when they came to the US, and I liked it.  I didn’t like the ads and the really bad recommendations they made (I am pretty sure I only listen to a top 40 song by accident), but the streaming was solid, and they had a lot of music on tap.  THe recently got “Metallica” in their inventory. Of course, I pay the $9.95 a month to get the premium service. Syncing files to my iPhone, and their application on my PC and Mac work quite well, with very few glitches.

    Apple’s iTunes Match was a distant second. Not on my mac, but on my PC, the iTunes application pretty much sucks donkey balls. Slow, resource heavy, and when I was streaming music, there was lots of stuttering and dead spaces. Groan.  Of course, I have all my music in the Google Play service. But their streaming, while better than Apple was still third rate compared to Spotify.

    Now Google has launched their “All Access” streaming service for about the same price as Spotify premium. I signed up today, and will exercise it for the full 30 days before deciding whether to drop it or Spotify.

    So far, it has been pretty good, and it does mix in items from my collection that are not licensed for streaming (Led Zeppelin, and Paul Gilbert are two I note.) But a downside is that it runs in the browser.  I may be a luddite, but I prefer it to be a sticky application (like spotify), and not something that will cut off if I have to quit Chrome (which happens with too much regularity).

    I will report back a few times to share how the test goes.

  • Music Theory

    I am a guitar player. Have been for a long time (better than 30 years now). I started with some lessons from a fellow BBS’er Vernon Anderson (He ran the”Rat’s Nest” BBS).

    I learned a lot very fast. I do remember the basics of music theory. How to build the scales, all the modes, the circle of 5ths, intervals, etc. But it really didn’t stick. I was too impatient to learn to play cool music, and the theory was boring to me. So I learned Scorpions, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, and other great tunes. I got pretty good at just riffing on Em pentatonic (if you can’t play the shit out of E pentatonic minor, you should give up the ‘axe), and playing bluesy licks and riffs.

    Then I stalled.  I practiced a lot when I was in college (it was a good excuse to not study), built some speed and chops. Even played out a few times. I picked up Noad’s Beginning guitar and learned some classical pieces (and how to read music).

    Fast forward 20+ years. I have been playing more, and picking up my skills again, but I am finally beginning to dive into theory. It is hard, because it is so tempting to just rip away. But I know that if I stick with the theory, the rest of my playing will become much better (and I will fumble less for notes when I am soloing.)

  • The first Supergroup – Emerson, Lake and Palmer

    This weekend, I completed my collection of ELP albums.  I started listening to them in the 70, and had worn out so many copies of Brain Salad Surgery (with the H. R. Geiger art on the cover), that I was glad to finally be able to buy it as a CD.

    Ah, great times, great tunes, and in awe of Keith Emerson’s keyboard prowess.  From the piano pieces, to the wailings of the Moog.  Just awesome.